Afghanistan

The US Central Command and US Forces Afghanistan are on the lookout for a private security contractor that might be able to field up to 600 security guards to keep watch over the walls and gates of Kandahar Airfield in southern Afghanistan at some point in the near future. In a notice posted on…

At a ceremony held in late September, Sierra Nevada Corp (SNC) and Embraer rolled out the first US-produced A-29 Super Tucano. Unsurprisingly, it looks an awful lot like the traditional Super Tucano, of which Embraer has produced more than 170, but it’s still a milestone for the team behind the plane. Without rehashing the tortured history…

After almost three years in Afghanistan, 2,150 flight hours and more than 1,950 sorties, the Marine Corps’ two K-MAX unmanned helicopters are being put out to pasture in central New York State. The unmanned rotary wing aircraft—which hauled a total of 4.5 million lbs. of cargo across southern Afghanistan since December 2011 for Marines…

(Updated July 28, 2014, with video from a Defense News Minute) In a city where the powerful often wear boring, dark-color suits, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel bucks that trend. The Nebraskan can often be found wearing bright-colored socks, slick power ties and casual kicks that have made the man in charge of the world’s most powerful…

As the congressional oversight panels continue their review of the Pentagon’s $58.6 billion 2015 Overseas Contingency Operations budget request, much of the focus has been on the high-profile items, such as a $4 billion request for a new counterterrorism fund and $1 billion to boost US military presence in Europe. But the request includes $53 billion…

By TOM KINGTON There is something weird about driving in a mud spattered armored vehicle around a dusty shanty town built in a Paris car park on a Thursday lunchtime. What is even weirder is that the vehicle – an Oshkosh M-ATV – is swerving round rocks and navigating gaps between shacks, although no-one is…

The heads of the US and UK militaries have met for the second time, continuing the recent revival of the “Combined Chiefs of Staff” meetings that were made famous during World War II. This time, the group of generals and admirals met Tuesday in London. The group discussed the “long-term strategic challenges the respective armed forces can expect to face together…

Buried beneath the nasty political brawl over the Obama administration’s swap of five senior Taliban prisoners for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl is Obama’s cold-blooded strategic thinking. And President Barack Obama’s big gamble already has deepened Republicans’ frustrations with him, which could make easing sequestration a political impossibility.

To say US lawmakers’ patience with all things Afghanistan — particularly the central government in Kabul — is running thin would be an understatement. And one senior Senate Democrat says Afghan officials’ inability to secure US-funded facilities is “not acceptable.”

Just over a month after an al Qaeda commander in Iraq accidently blew himself up along with twenty-one aspiring suicide bombers while instructing them on the tools of the trade with a live belt packed with explosives, reports are coming out of Afghanistan that a fighter recently killed fifteen of this commanders in a suicide…